Petra Mandula from the Hungarian capital Budapest is already 26 years old, but whilst other girls in that age already have thoughts what to do after the tennis career, Petra must have found some afterburner and reached a career-high postition of number 38.

She played a fantastic 2003 season, where she reached at least round 2 in all 4 Grand Slams and had further decent results in Sopot, Budapest, Indian Wells, Acapulco, Paris Indoors and Dubai.

And it was at Dubai last year, where the clay-court specialist started her run from position number 97 to number 40, after she went through the qualifyings and beat Cara Black in the first round 6-0 (!) and 7-5, before she lost to Amelie Mauresmo by the tightest imaginable score: 5-7 in the third set tie-break.

And 2004 started not bad at all for the righthanded player, too. At the Hopman Cup she won 3 matches, one of them vs. Hantuchova with the amazing result of 6-0 and 7-6. At the Australian Open she reched round three, eliminating 24th seed Maleeva in round two and lost there a very tight match vs. the Hungarian number 2, Aniko Kapros, with a score of 10-12 in the third set. Her latest tournament was Paris-Indoors, though, where she lost in a disappointing match to Serna.

Jelena played the Hungarian number 1 twice in her career, and who of Jelenas fans wouldnt remember their first meeting at Roland Garros 2001, when the new rising star of the WTA had an open draw and completely underestimated Mandula and lost to her in three sets. Their second meeting happened only a few months ago at Linz in Austria, and Jelena took revenge with nearly the same score as 2 years ago. Jelena won a very emotional match 6-3, 3-6 and 6-3.

Emotionally their third meeting will be the easiest out of all three for Jelena, but Mandula plays her best tennis ever, and so physically it will be Jelenas thoughest challenge vs. the 1.78 meters tall player.

Good luck JELENA :-)